`Waiting For The Moon` Will Keep You Waiting

April 29, 1987|By Dave Kehr, Movie critic.

In ``Waiting for the Moon,`` Jill Godmilow hasn`t tried to film the lives of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, but has tried to film the mystique of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas--the glamorous existence of two Americans in Paris; the literary salon full of famous friends; the country house full of fresh flowers and sunlight; the enduring, intimate relationship between two women.

Which is to say that the film doesn`t show much real curiosity about its subjects, about the world they lived in or their manner of living in it. For the most part, the film is content to name-drop (``Willy``--Guillaume Apollinaire; ``Pablo``--Pablo Picasso; ``Ernest``--Ernest Hemingway), and to quote-drop (``A rose is a rose is a rose``) and image-drop (picnics in the French countryside, sea gulls flapping against sea cliffs). Much less than a movie, this is a collection of trademarks, fanned out in a way that allows the audience to feel flattered when they recognize them.

In a movie about writers, language ought to be an important element. Yet Godmilow (best known for the 1974 documentary ``Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman``) never manages to make her characters speak convincingly. Tiny Linda Hunt, of ``The Year of Living Dangerously,`` is Toklas, and the imposing Linda Bassett, with her big hands and close-cropped hair, is Gertrude Stein, and they don`t have an honest syllable between them. The dialogue isn`t acted but quoted--read in a sing-song monotone that, more than any emotion, conjures an image of a flat, printed page.

Language receives further abuse from the French-speaking members of the supporting cast--Jacques Boudet as Apollinaire, Bernadette Lafont as Picasso`s mistress of the moment, Fernande Olivier. They seem fine and natural when they are speaking their own tongue but lapse into phonetically memorized gibberish when called upon to perform in English.

We are far from filmmaking here, closer to something like a grade school history pageant, proceeding through a series of sketches. The little boy who wears a three-cornered hat and a sign reading ``George Washington`` around his neck could scarcely be less convincing than Bruce McGill, who plays Hemingway with a black mustache, booming voice and brandy bottle in his hand, and at one point playfully ``shoots`` himself in the head with a pen--luckily, he discovers, unloaded.

We see Alice and Gertrude frisking with Apollinaire, Alice and Gertrude frisking with Henry Hopper (Andrew McCarthy, his eyes rolling as if he were sensing a seizure coming on), and Alice and Gertrude frisking with each other, writing humorous letters and exchanging droll literary barbs. People die, and Alice and Gertrude look sad. Babies are born, and Alice and Gertrude look happy.

The disconnected sequences are framed by cutaways to a blissful morning at the country home, where Alice and Gertrude are proofreading a novel in the sunny garden. As they read to each other, the camera careens screwily around them, like a bumblebee trying to decide which one of the women to sting. The technique here would look wildly excessive at the climax of a Brian De Palma thriller; applied to a tranquil country morning, the effect is bizarre and more than a little sick-making.

In representing Stein and Toklas` relationship, Godmilow seems to have some vague feminist point in mind. Here are women being women, their lives unoppressed by any servitude to imperious males. Yet these women don`t express any physical affection, apart from the occasional chaste cuddle, and their relationship is depicted wholly in terms of a conventional middle-class marriage. Gertrude is the breadwinner, distant, distracted and self-involved; Alice is the happy homemaker, devoting her life to the care and feeding of her ``genius.``

Like any good housewife who`s seen a session or two of ``Donahue,`` Alice occasionally complains to Gertrude of her lack of thoughtfulness and sensitivity. Gertrude is properly abashed, and makes up by sending flowers with clever notes. If this is an alternate lifestyle, then ``Father Knows Best`` is Maoist propaganda.

``WAITING FOR THE MOON``

(STAR)

Directed by Jill Godmilow; written by Mark Magill and Jill Godmilow;

photographed by Andre Neau; production designed by Patrice Mercier; music by Michael Sahl; edited by George Klotz; produced by Sandra Schulberg. A Skouras Pictures release; Running time: 1:28. MPAA rating: PG.